Mama Cando – You’re welcome! Sorry my answer was so L-o-o-o-ng though, lol.
Cinnamon Grammy – Here’s a great list from SoulyRested dot com of 22 types of trees that can be tapped to make syrup: ‘Maple Varieties – Sugar maple – This is the holy grail of maples because its sap is more concentrated than any other maple, meaning you can make more syrup with less sap. Black maple – These rival sugar maples in sap volume and they even resemble them as well. Red maple – While they also produce high yields of sap, rep maples bud the earliest of the other maples in the spring, so their tapping season is shorter. I’m told their sap produces a yummy, slightly tart syrup. Silver maple – While these trees produce spring buds very early, therefore have a rather short tapping season, they make fine syrup. Corey Kanable, of Wisconsin, makes his syrup from a mixture of sugar and silver maple sap every year. Scott Cherek is also in Wisconsin and taps solely silver maples. Norway maple These maples don’t make syrup as sweet as sugar maples, but Roland Jordan, in Rhode Island, taps 30 Norway maples every year and says his syrup has “a nice buttery flavor.” Gorosoe – The gorosoe is the most popular tapping tree in Korea, where its name means “the tree that is good for the bones.” But the sap is enjoyed as a refreshing, healthy drink, not boiled down for syrup. Boxelder – This very hardy tree frequently grows in abandoned areas, along railroad tracks, and in ditches, this may be a sugarmaking tree that you can easily find in the wild and forage sap from. But boxelders may yield only half the syrup of typical sugar maples. Bigleaf maple – Native Americans have tapped these trees for centuries, but current-day sugarmakers tend to not even know about this powerhorse. A group of sugarmakers on Vancouver Island are changing this. Pamela Williams says that bigleaf maples can rival sugar maples in not only sugar content, but also production. Pamela has learned to watch the barometer more than the thermometer to know when to tap. She explains, “Bigleaf sap runs happen after extreme weather events. Barometric swings between the atmosphere and the tree produce sap runs as good as, if not better than, a reliable freeze-and-thaw cycle,” which is important when Vancouver experiences a mild winter. Canyon maple/big tooth maple – These trees are popular in the Rocky Mountain states and Texas. While their sap has high sugar content, their volume isn’t so great. Rocky Mountain maple The Plateau Native Americans made syrup from these trees, found in western North America. WALNUT varieties – Butternut/white walnut – The butternut aligns closely with the sugar maple for sugar content and volume of sap. Black walnut – The black walnut tree is a valuable timber species, as well as a good source for sap, with a long tapping season. I hear it is a truly delicious syrup, with a nutty undertone. Chrystal Smallwood, in northeast Pennsylvania, makes black walnut syrup. She says it’s a rich, dark color and has a unique flavor, which is just a little bitter. Dalton Westerbeck, a backyard sugarmaker in Cinncinnati, says that black walnut syrup is by far his favorite of any variety he’s made or tasted. Although he says it’s not as sweet as maple syrup, it’s “definitely sweet enough.” In addition, Dalton finds the sap-to-syrup ratio is pretty comparative to maple, about 40-50 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup. Even so, many feel black walnuts are more valuable for lumber than syrup, since their wood earns quite a nice penny. In addition, selling them for lumber means you can rid your property of the huge mess that they cause, dropping tons of nuts that turn to black mush. I have heard that people actually harvest their nuts, but I truly have no idea how anyone can get past the extremely messy, staining black layer between the outer shell and the inner nut. Heartnut – While heartnuts have a good concentration of sugar in their sap, they produce much less sap than maples. English walnut These trees produce the walnuts we purchase from the grocery store. They can be tapped, but they need especially cold winter and spring temperatures to be tapped successfully. BIRCH varieties – Paper birch – While the paper birch requires a lot more boiling time than maples, since it has a very low sugar content (less than 1%), it is the sweetest of the birch trees. Yellow birch – This birch tree sap has a higher mineral composition and a higher number of antioxidants than sugar maples’ sap, but a lower sugar content. Black birch – While black birch, native to eastern North America, is most most commonly used to make birch beer, it can be tapped for syrup too. River birch – This birch grows in the southeastern United States and in the Northeast, and it can be successfully tapped. Gray birch – While this is more of a shrub than a tree, the gray birch can be tapped if it grows large enough. European white birch – While this tree is grown as an ornamental in United States, European white birch can be tapped for syrup. But I do feel like I should add here that I’ve been told by a gentleman who did actually make white birch syrup that he would never do it again; he personally found the taste “unappealing,” to say it nicely. Still, it has a very nice redeeming quality, if you want to use birch syrup for cooking, I’ve heard it makes a wonderful substitute for vanilla. OTHER varieties – Sycamore – While the sycamore tree has a lower sugar content than sugar maple, it produces a syrup that some describe as having a touch of butterscotch flavor. Others have told me it has undertones of a honey-like taste. Yet someone else says “like caramel.” Any of those options sound wonderful to me. Of course most people have never heard of tapping Sycamore, so there is a wealth of delicious sycamore sap around the country just waiting to be tapped into. Because of it’s lower sugar content, as well as it’s uniqueness, sugarmakers could charge a pretty penny for the syrup. That of course does come after much hard work. Paul Hovan, a sugarmaker in VT, explains that you are lucky to have 1% sugar content with sycamore, so it takes 100 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup and a vacuum system is a must, in his opinion. He describes his sycamore syrup as having a “molasses” flavor, but explains that boiling down even farther than he typically does offers the delicious butterscotch flavor I’ve heard about. American hophornbeam – These trees, also called hardhack or ironwood (although I’m told “ironwood” can refer to other trees as well), produce a sap later in the spring, and their sugar content and volume are greatly reduced compared to birch trees, not alone maples.’